Efficiency drive loses government £81m

via The most recent articles from Accountancy Age by Kevin Reed on 23 May


Department for Transport efficiency drive to save £57m sets it back by £81m
An efficiency drive meant to save The Department for Transport £57m actually cost it £81m, according to an NAO report.


Read the full article

Dawn's comment:
Committee chair Edward Leigh tells us that this efficiency drive would not look out of place in an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister"!

Double vision

It's a year since England's education department split in two. Is the new structure better for teachers and students asks Jessica Shepherd and Anthea Lipsett
The Guardian 27 May

Read the full article

Dawn's comment:
The general concensus presented by the authors is that, while the split may be working for the government, those at the chalk face are less enthralled.

Research reveals how learning new skills can help safeguard your career...

via Onrec.com - United Kingdom headlines on 27 May


How to beat cutbacks


Read the full article

Dawn's comment:
This item ends with a list of jobs that the Learning and Skills Council believes are "credit-crunch-proof ". Interestingly, the list includes childcare.

Information behaviour meets social capital: a conceptual model

an article by Gunilla Widén-Wulff, Stefan Ek, Mariam Ginman, Reija Perttilä, Pia Södergård and Anna-Karin Tötterman (Åbo Akademi University, Finland) in Journal of Information Science Volume 34 Number 3 (2008)

Abstract
Much research has been done on the favourable influence of social environment and social networks on knowledge production. The aim of this article is to design a theoretical framework where both information behaviour (IB) research and social capital (SC) research are integrated. Integrating these areas is seen as an advantage when focusing on the social construction of knowledge, and a model is proposed to illuminate sources and consequences of social capital and knowledge sharing. This framework will function as a basis on which to build when the authors proceed with a number of empirical studies involving the university context, social networks of the unemployed, and virtual networks of young people.

Cities limited

via Latest Internet resources added to Intute: Science Engineering and Technology on 12 May


This discussion paper, written by Tim Leunig and James Swaffield of Policy Exchange, is the first of a series of three. It "describes the legacy of Britain's early industrialisation and summarises the urban policies of successive governments since 1945. It sets out to establish the facts and shows that urban policy has failed to improve the prospects of declining towns".

53-page PDF here
Note: I found it slow to load but well worth the wait.

As always, grateful thanks to to staff at Intute for alerting us to some stunning resources.

Government shelves compulsory personal carbon trading

Kable's Government Computing 9 May

Public fears over data management have contributed to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' decision to suspend research into a national personal carbon trading scheme.

Full story

Hazel's comment:
Bloomin' silly idea to start with.

8 tips for creating your personal brand

via TechRepublic Blogs by Toni Bowers on 22 April


For the best results in job hunting, you need to act as your own marketing expert and create and advertise your personal brand.


Here are eight great tips for putting your best foot forward online.


Read the list here

Hazel's comment:
Nothing particularly new in the list but useful all the same.

THREE for interest

Kidnetic.comvia Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week on 5/31/07Material about food and fitness for children. Features indoor and outdoor games and activities, recipes for nutritious foods, and an interactive diagram of the human body and associated fact sheets about healthy eating and exercise. Fact sheet topics include weight concerns, the 10,000 step per day challenge, going vegetarian, and fitting in fast food favorites. Also includes material for parents in English and Spanish. From the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation.


The human brain is a less-than-perfect device
via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza on 5/13/08
From Newsweek:
Despite the fact that humans have been known to be eaten by bears, sharks and assorted other carnivores, we love to place ourselves at the top of the food chain. And, despite our unwavering conviction that we are smarter than the computers we invented, members of our species still rob banks with their faces wrapped in duct tape and leave copies of their resumes at the scene of the crime. Six percent of sky-diving fatalities occur due to a failure to remember to pull the ripcord, hundreds of millions of dollars are sent abroad in response to shockingly unbelievable e-mails from displaced African royalty and nobody knows what Eliot Spitzer was thinking.
Are these simply examples of a few subpar minds amongst our general brilliance? Or do all human minds work not so much like computers but as Rube Goldberg machines capable of both brilliance and unbelievable stupidity? In his new book, "Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind," New York University professor Gary Marcus uses evolutionary psychology to explore the development of that "clumsy, cobbled-together contraption" we call a brain and to answer such puzzling questions as, "Why do half of all Americans believe in ghosts?" and "How can 4 million people believe they were once abducted by aliens?"
According to Marcus, while we once we used our brains simply to stay alive and procreate, the modern world and its technological advances have forced evolution to keep up by adapting ancient skills for modern uses--in effect simply placing our relatively new frontal lobes (the home of memory, language, speech and error recognition) on top of our more ancient hindbrain (in charge of survival, breathing, instinct and emotion.) It is Marcus's hypothesis that evolution has resulted in a series of "good enough" but not ideal adaptations that allow us to be smart enough to invent quantum physics but not clever enough to remember where we put our wallet from one day to the next or to change our minds in the face of overwhelming evidence that our beliefs are wrong.
More here.

Friday fun
via Science, Engineering & Technology Blog by Anne on 5/16/08
The Nobel Foundation has put together this collection of educational games based on Nobel prize-winning achievements.
Six games are available: Invar and Steel Alloys, Lord of the Flies, Plastics, Nuclear Weapons, The Ear Pages, and Trade.

HP buys EDS for $13.9bn

via Computing.co.uk Latest updates by Janie Davies on 13 May


The boards of HP and EDS have approved the acquisition
HP has confirmed plans to acquire EDS for $13.9bn (£7.1bn) after the boards of both companies reached a unanimous agreement.


Read the full article

Hazel's comment:
EDS is, as you may be aware, the supplier of IT services to the Department for Work and Pensions and has developed the Internet Job Bank which provides information on vacancies notified to Jobcentre Plus.

And yet more trivia

Europeans were not the first painters to use oils
via 3quarksdaily by Abbas Raza on 26 April
from John Cartwright in Physics World
Europeans are often a little too eager to take credit for innovation. Copernicus may have formalized the heliocentric model of the solar system in the early 1500s, for example, but the Pole only did so with the help of vast tables of astronomical measurements taken 200 years earlier in Iran. Even the scientific method itself, often thought to have emerged from Galileo's experiments in Italy around the same time, has its roots with Arab scientists of the 11th century.
Brilliant -- there's nothing new under the sun!

Frith Photo Library
via Intute: Social Sciences Research Tools and Methods gateway on 6 May
Over 360,000 photographs of towns, villages and other geographical locations in the UK allowing then and now comparisons.
Take care to check out the copyright information.


Arts & Letters Daily on 27 April
As a student, Tony Judt was an ardent backer of Labor Zionism, worked on a kibbutz and volunteered in the 1967 war. But times change, and so did he... more


Interrogating the CIA
via Mr Bojangles by Tom Ilube on 22 April
Yesterday afternoon I joined a small group of men in grey suits in a nondescript building in central London to meet with and ask searching questions of the CIA. No, no, no! Not THAT CIA, you silly billy. I mean Kim Cameron, the jovial, highly respected Chief Identity Architect of Microsoft Corp.


The impact of the hive mind -- all of us are smarter than one of us
via TechRepublic Blogs by Tricia Liebert on 14 April
With the growth of the Internet and human beings' natural desire to group together, the "hive mind" has become a reality. Now all we have to do is figure out all the myriad applications of that mind.

BBC plotted to strangle ITV with "Archers"
Archives show that the BBC manipulated the storyline of its long-running radio soap opera to draw attention away from the launch of commercial television in 1955
Read more » from the Financial Times

Arts & Letters Daily 4 May 2008
Classical music: abandoned, left behind sulking in its tent as culture moves on, with the action happening somewhere else... more

A Music-Recognition Breakthrough
via Pogue's Posts by David Pogue on 22 April
O.K., whoa. I just read about a new computer program that can listen to a recorded chord in music and figure out what notes are in it. May not sound like much, but it’s never been done before.

Friday fun
via Intute's Science, Engineering & Technology Blog by Anne on 9 May
Another fun website this week. The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art and human perception located in San Francisco. Its website has many interesting resources and activities including the science of cooking, the science behind your favourite sports, earthquakes, climate change and frogs.


What Happened At the Old Bailey?
via ResearchBuzz by admin on 28 April
If you have English ancestry, an interest in your family's history, and some patience, do I have a site for you. It's a website aggregating the proceeding of the trials at the Old Bailey (the Central Criminal Court in England) from 1674-1913.

Immigrant wage differentials, ethnicity and occupational segregation

an article by Robert J R Elliott (University of Birmingham) and Joanne K Lindley (University of Sheffield) in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Volume 171 Issue 3 (June 2008)

Abstract
The authors investigate occupational attainment as well as estimating earnings differentials for non-white migrants and non-white natives, including occupational effects. They control for the occupational selection of immigrants and compare across native and immigrant groups. Relative to white natives, they find no evidence of an ethnic pay disadvantage for white and South Asian professional workers. Although occupational segregation and other human capital and socio-economic factors provide a partial explanation for the raw earnings differential, evidence of ethnic-based disadvantage in most occupations persists.

Rowling privacy ruling bolsters Commissioner's view of data protection law

via OUT-LAW News on 9 May

The Court of Appeal's ruling in JK Rowling's privacy case confirms that a breach of other laws can result in an automatic breach of the Data Protection Act, an expert has said.

Read the full article

More "buddy" mentors to reduce youth homelessness

via Communities and Local Government: Corporate news articles on 9 May

Read the full news release

Hazel's comment:
I'm really unclear as to how the buddying / role model scheme works. Perhaps someone could enlighten me -- and anyone else who is similarly unsure.

Guidance on marketing as a profession

via Onrec.com - United Kingdom headlines


The Chartered Institute of Marketing is launching a new microsite giving guidance on how to get into marketing for final year students and recent graduates who are interested in a career in the profession.

Read the full article

Policy Press new resources

As usual I have picked out those publications from the Policy Press newsletter that I think will be of interest to at least some readers of this blog.

Better Partnership Working, edited by Jon Glasby and Helen Dickinson and published in association with Community Care, is an exciting series of accessible "how to" books providing an essential introduction to partnership working.
More information

Rural Ageing, edited by Norah Keating, addresses a growing international interest in "age-friendly" communities, examining the conflicting stereotypes of rural communities as either idyllic and supportive or isolated and bereft of services.
More information

Hazel's comment:
I'm not sure how much you may or may not be involved with rural communities or the problem of ageing within those communities but partnership is, I know, a perennial problem for those offering guidance. Marriages may be made in heaven but some social partnerships between organisations seem to have originated in the other place.

An emerging career no one knows about

via TechRepublic Blogs by Toni Bowers on 24 April

Helping to automate hospital record-keeping is an up-and-coming (and lucrative) career choice.

Read the full article


Hazel's comment:
Toni writes about IT-related topics -- nursing informatics was the only job she found on Yahoo! Education recently which was IT related. I tried to check our what the other jobs were and found a) that Yahoo! Education seems to be very US-centric and b) careers information in any sense that we would understand was decidedly thin on the ground.
I could not, however, leave it there and spent rather more time than was sensible on one post -- BUT, celebrate with a cuppa, I found useful information on the original job title at Health Career Net -- and it's based in the UK despite calling it a Career Center. I've been away from the front-line for too long now to judge on the accuracy of the career articles but they "looked OK".
One little peeve -- the site is not set out in columns which means that if you are, as I am, using a wide screen then reading the article is rather like watching Wimbledon!

Avoiding the training -- getting the credit

James Robertson who writes the Column Two blog tells a story about pilots and avoiding training and then comes back with some thoughts on the story from UK governance expert Graham Oakes.




Hazel's comment:
This is, I suspect, a not-uncommon occurrence -- working out ways of getting credit for having completed the training without having actually having learned anything.
That this is a true story and is about how airline pilots manage to fool their employer into thinking that they are complying with the rules about maintaining knowledge terrifies me!

The Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2008

Hazel's comment:
comes at the beginning!
What follows is a copy of the Statutory Instrument which brings several organisations into the remit of the Freedom of Information Act. I presume that the organisations concerned know that they are now subject to this but do the plebs that might want to take advantage of this by putting a question to any of the bodies listed? [see the list at the end].
I've included all the blurb so that you can see how awkward it is sometimes to find out what is going on.

The Secretary of State, in exercise of the powers conferred by section 4(1) and (6) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000(1), makes the following Order:

Citation and commencement
1.—(1) This Order may be cited as the Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2008.
(2) This Order shall come into force on 2nd June 2008.

Additional public authorities
2. The bodies listed in the Schedule to this Order shall be added to Part 6 of Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, at the appropriate place in each case.
Signed by the authority of the Secretary of State
Michael Wills
Minister of State
Ministry of Justice
8th May 2008

Article 2
SCHEDULE
The Big Lottery Fund
The Consumer Council for Water
The Legal Deposit Advisory Panel
The Olympic Lottery Distributor
The TB Advisory Group
The UK Commission for Employment and Skills

Dear Virgin Media: if Net Neutrality is "bollocks" then you can get stuffed

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 7 May

Last month, Neil Berkett (the new CEO of Virgin Media, one of my ISPs in London) announced that Network Neutrality was "bollocks" and that Internet services would have to pay for premium connections or be relegated to the "Internet bus-lane." In other words, rather than giving me the sites I asked for as fast as they could, Virgin would henceforth deliver the sites that paid bribes faster than other sites (Virgin tried to spin this by saying that the sites that paid would get priority traffic -- but how do you prioritise one service's packets without de-prioritising other sites' packets?).
I said then that I would resign my Virgin account over this, and now that I'm back in London, I've been able to look up my account number and send off the following letter (they have 28 days to respond, and I'll post their reply here too).

Read the full article including the letter that Cory sent and then scroll through the comments -- some of them are really to the point. For example, "Isn't Virgin Media just Telewest by another name?" Yes, of course it is -- and it's NTL by another name and the service from that company wasn't fantastic!

MPs call for intervention on number of sites

via Computing.co.uk Latest updates by Computing staff on 1 May

Out of control, says report
MPs have accused the government of letting enthusiasm for web-based services run out of control. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the number of government sites has...

Read the full article

Hazel's comment:
I really thought that this issue had been addressed but it seems that there are several government departments that are creating new websites faster than the coordinating body for closing down and amalgamating sites can deal with!

Oh my gawd ...

via The Obvious? by Euan [Semple] 21 April


The nightmare that called itself knowledge management would appear to be attempting to morph into wisdom management. Abandon faith all ye who enter ....

Hazel's comment:
Abandon wisdom if you think you can manage it -- most people can't even define it!
And as one commenter on this post said, we need to step back and manage information properly before moving beyond knowledge into wisdom! Euan's profile says:

The Internet enables “globally distributed, near instant, person to person conversations” - are you enabling such conversations inside your organisation? Are you interested in helping your people find each other, learn from each other and to use these connections to improve your efficiency and increase your ability to innovate? In addition to 21 years culminating in a senior position in the BBC I have had five years of unparalleled experience learning how to make the most of this wired-up world of work and how businesses can prepare themselves for the challenges and the opportunities it represents. I am highly connected to the most influential movers and shakers of this new environment and my workshops, which have often been described as inspirational, have already been experienced by many diverse audiences worldwide.

I've been reading interesting ideas on this blog including discussions with other knowledge management "gurus" for some time now but this one prompted me to bring it to your attention. I'm not a fan of OMG as an exclamation of horror but in this instance "heaven preserve us" seems to reflect my feelings very accurately.

Freedom of information survey

University College London is conducting an online survey on the impact of the Freedom of Information Act, and is seeking views from anyone who has requested information from a central government department. The findings from the survey will help to clarify the costs and benefits of the Freedom of Information Act, particularly in relation to government accountability, public understanding, participation in politics and the quality of government decision-making.
For more information about the survey, contact Ben Worthy at UCL via email on: b.worthy@ucl.ac.uk or by calling 020 7679 4974.

Why do Europeans work (much) less? It is taxes and government spending

an article by Tine Dhont and Freddy Heylen (Ghent University) in Economic Inquiry Volume 46 Issue 2 (April 2008)

Abstract

The authors develop and calibrate a theoretical model that explains per capita hours worked and output growth as a function of three fiscal policy variables. Differences in income taxes, productive government expenditures, and non employment transfers are sufficient to answer the question why Europeans work (much) less than Americans and why some Europeans work less than others. Differences in taste for leisure have little role to play given the actual variation of these three policy variables.

Hazel's comment: Tax workers too much and they will not work such long hours that additional tax becomes payable. It is human nature to want to see reward for one's labour whether this is expressed as "more money in the pay packet" or is visible as beneficial government spending with the revenue collected.

Interesting trivia

Publisher's daleks claim exterminated - The Guardian via Current Awareness by sally on 16 April
"Today a high court battle over who owns the rights to tell the story of Doctor Who's best-known adversaries was won by BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm."
Full story The Guardian, 16 April

Arts & Letters Daily 17 April 16 April
Memory in a computer is located somewhere on a chip. But we have no idea where memories in our brains are stored. Gary Marcus explains. more

Microscopic world : physical chemistry tutorial via Latest Internet resources added to Intute: Science Engineering and Technology on 14 April
This tutorial covers classical mechanics, quantum theory, atomic structure, molecular structure, spectroscopy and kinetics. The tutorial was written by Robert Disselkamp and is hosted on the Solaris Science website. It is shareware and is available as a PDF file.
Details

Eating your own dog food via silicon.com: Public Sector by Peter Cochrane on 14 April
How do so many designers get it so badly wrong?

Shakespeare's Pulp Fiction via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 19 April
Livejournal's Ceruleanst's produced a couple of passages' worth of Pulp Fiction, as written by William Shakespeare:
J: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;I visited no inn it could be bought.

Link One virtual step for man, one real leap for mankind
Imagine being able to take a step back in time and walk through the streets of ancient Pompeii hours before the eruption of Vesuvius.
ICT Results Bulletin Issue 17 (April 2008)

Emotional machines
Emotions are an intrinsic part of communications. But machines don’t have, perceive or react to them, which makes us – their handlers – hot under the collar. But thanks to building blocks developed by European researchers, machines that "feel" may no longer be confined to science fiction.
ICT Results Bulletin Issue 17 (April 2008)

Cloud Appreciation Society via Latest Internet resources added to Intute: Science Engineering and Technology on 15 April
A UK-based society which is dedicated to clouds. The website contains news related to clouds, a photo gallery with more than 3,500 photos, a discussion forum, cloud related poems and drawings submitted by members and information on how to become a member of the society.

Arts & Letters Daily (18 Apr 2008)
Plants are green because the sun that keeps them alive is a type G star. If they'd evolved for a red dwarf, plants would be black... more

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn?via 3quarksdaily by Abbas Raza on 23 April
Gary Wolf in Wired:
SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information.
More here. [Thanks to Akbi Khan.]

Same issues, different treatment: common law and civilian approaches to the copyright treatment of freelance works

an article by Giuseppina D'Agostino in International Journal of Intellectual Property Management Volume 2 Number 1

Abstract
Publishers exploit freelance authors' works not only in print but also digitally, through their own websites or by selling them to third party databases. Freelancers have launched a series of copyright infringement cases against publishers of newspapers and magazines. This paper will argue that the issue of which party should own and control digital exploitation rights is treated differentially across jurisdictions; North American courts struggle to apply vague and seemingly "neutral" copyright law provisions, whereas the continental European courts apply express legislation. Continental European courts are more equipped to resolve such issues, and in tandem with necessary legislative reform, North American courts may do well to consider some of the civilian approaches in common law decision-making.

Hazel's comment:
Copyright in the electronic age has presented problems for authors and "consumers" since the beginning of the electronic age. What is expressed as a new issue in this article is publishers (who should know better in any jurisdiction) "stealing" the work of authors!

Household debt and financial assets: evidence from Germany, Great Britain and the USA

an article by Sarah Brown and Karl Taylor (University of Sheffield) in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Volume 171 Issue 3 (Page 615-643, June 2008)

Summary
The authors explore the determinants of debt, financial assets and net worth at the household level by using survey data for Germany, Great Britain and the USA. To identify which households are potentially vulnerable to adverse changes in the economic environment, they also explore the determinants of a range of measures of financial pressure:

• the probability that a household has negative net worth;
• the debt-to-income ratio;
• mortgage income gearing; and
• the saving-to-income ratio.

Their empirical findings suggest that the poorest and the youngest households are the most vulnerable to adverse changes in their financial circumstances.

Hazel's comment:
This could be considered the most contrived conjunction of posts I have ever achieved. Pure coincidence, I assure you, that the assessment of household finance comes immediately next to looking at the sustainability of economic welfare.
The former, this abstract, came in just today whilst the latter was several days old!

Simplifying the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare: methodology, data sources and a case study for The Netherlands

an article by Brent Bleys in International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment Volume 3 Number 2


Abstract
The compilation of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) requires a large amount of data on a wide range of topics. Gathering these data is a very difficult task that has undoubtedly put off researchers in the past. First, this paper puts forward a Simplified ISEW (SISEW) that includes in its methodological framework only the quantitatively most important items. Reducing the number of items in the methodological framework of the ISEW does not only allow for an easier compilation of the index, also it indicates which items require most attention in the debate that will lead to an internationally-agreed-upon set of valuation methods. Next, the impact of working with the SISEW instead of the original ISEW is investigated for the studies on Belgium, the UK and Australia. Afterwards, the specific data needs for the items that satisfied the quantitative significance criterion are looked into and possible data sources for each item are reviewed. Finally, the SISEW is calculated for The Netherlands in order to see how readily available the data needed to compile the simplified index are in practice.

Hazel's comment:
I found, on reading this, that I was very rusty on economic welfare. There are, undoubtedly, better (as in more scholarly) places to refresh my brain but more accessible to the less academic among us (like me) is the Wikipedia entry.
I'm a great fan of Wikipedia as a starting point for finding out about different subjects. If you follow my example please always do some double checks on the references because there are some articles which are not simply less than informative but are actually disinformation. Most do, of course, get corrected fairly quickly but ... just my luck to find one when it was in a state of less than usefulness.

Interesting (to me) trivia

Another eclectic list of odd things I thought were interesting, or weird

Robotic minds think alike?
from ICT Results Issue 16
Most schoolchildren struggle to learn geometry, but they are still able to catch a ball without first calculating its parabola. Why should robots be any different? A team of European researchers have developed an artificial cognitive system that learns from experience and observation rather than relying on predefined rules and models.

Edible packaging seen as next wave of innovation
via Technology Trends & Opinion » Blah, Blah! Technology blog by wasmall on 31 March
Edible coatings based on various mixes of milk serum proteins, starch, and mesquite gum could be the basis for the next innovative wave in food packaging, says a researcher in Spain.

Social awareness ribbons are must-have fashion accessories. They show you care. Especially about exhibiting what a caring person you are... more
via Arts & Letters Daily on 4 Apr 2008

That "lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose," the newspaper, will land for the last time on a doorstep one day in 2043... more
via Arts & Letters Daily 28 March
Apropos of nothing much I note that in June 2043 I shall, if I continue living, be 100 years old. Will I care that newspapers have disappeared? Probably not.

Wicked Jihad?
via Demos Greenhouse by jamie.bartlett@demos.co.uk on 5 March
I have written a short think piece which questions some of the assumptions about our understanding of "Islamic" violent extremism. Counter terrorism policy in Western Europe is increasingly about preventing violent extremism before it arises, by lessening the appeal of groups like al-Qaeda. But we are still a long way from understanding what that appeal is.
Download the piece

CCTV cameras move crime a few feet down the sidewalk -- study
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 7 April
A fascinating study of security cameras in San Francisco has concluded that any effect on they have on crime is incredibly localized, and they only works on certain kinds of crime -- furthermore, the same number of crimes end up getting committed in the long run, just down the street from the cameras.
Link (via Schneier)

Animal Crackers
3 Quarks Daily has a post which simply has the title and a YouTube video to watch. If you're a fan of Groucho, Harpo and Chico aka the Marx Brothers then you will probably already have a link to this -- if not then go and look!

And Now, 'Google Me' The Movie
Everyone has searched on his/her own name and some people even have real-time news alerts tied to their names. Now a new online documentary takes this vanity search phenomenon to a new level with Google Me the Movie. Part time actor Jim Killeen discovered there were six other Jim Killeens...

Your Birth Tune
via Pogue's Posts by David Pogue on 11 April
What was the #1 most popular song on the day you were born? Has this question been keeping you up at night? Then today's your lucky day. On this site, you can specify your birth month and date.

Forvo - all the words in the world…spoken out loud
via The Red Ferret Journal by Nigel on 11 April
Forvo is a kind of wiki dictionary for the spoken word. If you've ever wondered how a word was pronounced, you'll love this new service. Just do a search for the word in question in any language and click the speak button to have a native speaker pronounce it for you.

MPs warn safety is underfunded

via FT.com 21 April

Ministers have been warned about a widespread concern that the Health and Safety Executive is inadequately funded, which is undermining its ability to carry out its work.

Read more »

Hazel's comment:
Actually the article makes it clear that whilst there are concerns that the HSE is underfunded the actual figures are not known since the allocation through the Comprehensive Spending Review is "hidden" within the Department for Work and Pensions budget. what is known is that an HSE site-visit is now likely to happen every 14.5 years as opposed to the every 7 years that it used to be. This increase in time between visits is probably the cause of the rise in fatal accidents at work.
Not sure I agree with that last one -- if employers can't adopt safe working practices, or ensure that staff operate to the rules of safe working, then no amount of pressure from a possible visit will make them work differently. Maybe the introduction of the Corporate Homicide Act will have some effect.

What do you think?

Do guidance staff (either careers or employment) still get out to look at workplaces? Do you get industrial knowledge training?
If not how do you cope?

Please add a comment if you know any answers.

Project will help "third sector"

via FT.com on 20 April

Ministers have decided to remove a large obstacle to the provision by charities of crucial public services, by asking Whitehall's statisticians to create a new system that measures the true value of services provided by the so-called “third sector”.

Read more »

National School of Government

er? a National School for government? government of what?

the blurb that arrived in my reader did not enlighten me much:

As the business school for government, we provide high quality learning and
development solutions to government organisations and individuals providing public services.
Visit our website

Public services? Ah yes, that's the public sector, isn't it? Well, yes it is but not entirely because there are now many organisations that provide public services whose staff are not public servants.

The old name for the organisation -- The Civil Service College -- really did not, it was decided by the powers that be, reflect what the organisation was about.

And that thought brings to mind a very pleasant 15 minutes that I spent with a lady on the National School's stand at a recent exhibition in the Excel Centre in London. We established that we both came from a Jobcentre background and thought being an employment adviser was the best job ever and then got on to the different training courses that are available at the National School.

Latest additions to the Credo Reference database

The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of Modern Criticism and Theory, Edinburgh University Press
Late Antiquity: A Guide to The Postclassical World, Harvard University Press
Marquis Who Was Who in America 1985-present
The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration Since 1965, Harvard University Press
The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health, Harvard University Press

Hazel's comment:
For regular readers -- 'nuf said.
For newcomers -- Credo Reference is a wonderful resource that for the small business or individual is simply far too expensive. However, many public libraries make this available through your "library card" -- and you don't have to go to the library to access it (at least if you live in Northamptonshire you don't).
For all reader -- please remember that the databases made available through your public library are usually there for personal use only so please check ther terms and conditions and don't abuse the service.

Uncertainty-tolerant design: Evaluating task performance and drag-and-link information gathering for a news-writing task

an article by Simon Attfield, Ann Blandford, John Dowell and Paul Cairns, (UCL Interaction Centre, University College London) in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Volume 66 Issue 6 (June 2008)

Abstract
Part of the challenge of designing systems to support knowledge work is to do so in a way which is sympathetic to users’ uncertainty. NewsHarvester is a test-bed system designed to support news research and writing in a way that accommodates uncertainty in relation to information gathering. It does this using ‘drag-and-link’; a simple feature by which text extracts copied from source locations are appended with hyperlinks to force the re-display of the source. The authors describe the rationale for using drag-and-link within NewsHarvester based on a previous ethnographic study of journalists, describe its implementation within NewsHarvester, and report a user-evaluation which compared drag-and-link with printing and standard drag-and-drop as information gathering mechanisms. They found that users wanted to relocate information they had not previously identified as useful in order to include it in their report, to better understand the context of information already extracted, and as part of a more serendipitous search for information to add to a near-complete report. Users also considered drag-and-link an easier method for gathering information than printing, and considered that drag-and-link made it easier to relocate information. They also considered that drag-and-link promoted more flexible and dynamic working and increased user enjoyment. An assessment of the quality of their work showed a trend that favoured drag-and-link over the other two methods, although this was not statistically significant. They conclude that drag-and-link improves user-experience during research and writing tasks in the face of information gathering uncertainty.


Hazel's comment:
And it all sounded very interesting until I tried to find this NewsHarvester "thing" as a thing in its own right. I found lots of different news aggregators which have tags and/or keywords of news harvester but not a product that is actually called that.
Ah well, I tried and admit defeat!
Anything which takes more than five minutes to find a sensible answer is not worth looking for (unless, says she with an avaricious gleam in her eye, I'm being paid for my time).

Uncertainty-tolerant design: Evaluating task performance and drag-and-link information gathering for a news-writing task

an article by Simon Attfield, Ann Blandford, John Dowell and Paul Cairns, (UCL Interaction Centre, University College London) in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Volume 66 Issue 6 (June 2008)

Abstract
Part of the challenge of designing systems to support knowledge work is to do so in a way which is sympathetic to users’ uncertainty. NewsHarvester is a test-bed system designed to support news research and writing in a way that accommodates uncertainty in relation to information gathering. It does this using ‘drag-and-link’; a simple feature by which text extracts copied from source locations are appended with hyperlinks to force the re-display of the source. The authors describe the rationale for using drag-and-link within NewsHarvester based on a previous ethnographic study of journalists, describe its implementation within NewsHarvester, and report a user-evaluation which compared drag-and-link with printing and standard drag-and-drop as information gathering mechanisms. They found that users wanted to relocate information they had not previously identified as useful in order to include it in their report, to better understand the context of information already extracted, and as part of a more serendipitous search for information to add to a near-complete report. Users also considered drag-and-link an easier method for gathering information than printing, and considered that drag-and-link made it easier to relocate information. They also considered that drag-and-link promoted more flexible and dynamic working and increased user enjoyment. An assessment of the quality of their work showed a trend that favoured drag-and-link over the other two methods, although this was not statistically significant. They conclude that drag-and-link improves user-experience during research and writing tasks in the face of information gathering uncertainty.

Hazel's comment:
And it all sounded very interesting until I tried to find this NewsHarvester "thing" as a thing in its own right. I found lots of different news aggregators which have tags and/or keywords of news harvester but not a product that is actually called that.
Ah well, I tried and admit defeat!
Anything which takes more than five minutes to find a sensible answer is not worth looking for (unless, says she with an avaricious gleam in her eye, I'm being paid for my time).

Mind Publications April 2008

Every month Helen Finch at Mind, the mental-health charity, sends me an email about its new books, any special offers and news from the organisation. Contact with Mind, and other similar organisations, is a hangover from the days when ADSET put together the leaflets for Information for Social Inclusion (IfSI). However, I still maintain that contact and will, perhaps, maybe, one day put IfSI information online.

The purpose of these meanderings? I thought you might like to know about the following new books.

Finding Jericho
An accessible novel about about a boy who lives with his uncle who is experiencing mental distress. An excellent resource for helping teenagers and adults to understand the impact that mental illness can have on the lives of those experiencing it and their families. £10
http://www.mind.org.uk/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/870

Living without marbles
A mix of autobiography, poetry and self-help tools written by someone who has learned to live with manic depression, anorexia, self-harm and her mother's suicide. £10
http://www.mind.org.uk/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/872

and revised books

BMA new guide medicines and drugs (seventh edition)
This excellent home-reference guide contains information on all major drugs and medicines in use in modern medical practice. £16.99
http://www.mind.org.uk/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/357

and special offers

Self-harm: perspectives from personal experience
Edited by Louise Pembroke, this is an enlightening and practical resource for anyone who harms themselves, and for those who care for them. Was £12, now £9.99
http://www.mind.org.uk/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/384

Trashing your info

I wrote a post this morning this morning about businesses finding their information "trashed" through negative comments being posted to various online fora.

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends has provided some advice on how to counter this damaging trend.

I thought:

a) I wonder whether it's not just business but information services that find that reputations have been lost through malicious comment; and
b) if you would link through and read about a charity site which I support called Answer4Earth.

Tenuous joining of two stories? Not really.

I support Anita's work but find much of it irrelevant to the UK (as she well knows since I not only read her blog regularly but am also Facebook friends with her) and until VERY recently Answer4Earth was very US-centric in its questions. I found it very difficult to get beyond level 15 because I had to keep guessing which person had done what in a baseball or Super Bowl event. No more! As promised Answer4Earth now recognises where you are from so please, please join me in looking at the ads and planting trees.

Blind People need not apply, the truth about online accessibility discrimination

via Onrec.com - United Kingdom headlines on 8 April

A lot has been said lately about the Disability Discrimination Act and whether or not your website is illegal.

Read more >>

Hazel's comment:
The truth is, as I'm sure many of you are aware, that there are more websites that do not comply with accessibility legislation than do.
And there are many that do not include the required company information.